


a modern kind of love

by secretlyHipster



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Development, Confident Katsuki Yuuri, Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, Pansexual, Pansexual Katsuki Yuuri, Sex and Gender, Sexuality, pansexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23699032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyHipster/pseuds/secretlyHipster
Summary: Victor and Yuri reminisce on the beach in Hasetsu.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	a modern kind of love

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Y’all are probably going to think I’m writing an OOC Yuuri, but what I’m really writing is how I think he would have developed by this point, assuming he and Victor got married and started working on their next competitive programs together as the show seemed to suggest. I also touch a little on how I think Yuuri sees his sexuality at this point, so if you’re not here for a squeeze of citrus then why are you reading BL fanfiction?
> 
> (My head-canon Yuuri has a language or literature degree, since it isn’t specified what he studied in Detroit. I took inspiration from my own classes for a little of his dialogue. The book referenced is called Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts by Catharine Sedgwick.)
> 
> LMK how you guys feel about this. I haven’t written any fiction in a WHILE, especially not fanfiction.

The smell of the dead seaweed and lingering red tide reminded Yuuri of his childhood; specifically, the flashes of his sister pushing him in the beach sand. The shells hidden within the wet ground would leave imprints on his palms and knees. He’d cry, claiming she made him bleed. She’d laugh at him; she was right to. He wasn’t physically injured, just his ego. Perhaps he had his sister to thank for forcing him to seek out an indoor sport. He had her to thank for the refuge of the ice, where no one would dare bother him, lest they slip on the terrain he’d mastered.

Nearly mastered.

  
The real master, the true king of dancing on the blades sat next to him, his arm around the dog whose body was an unwelcome source of heat between them. Makkachin panted heavily and unrelentingly, releasing an impressive stench from his jowls.

  
Yuuri spit out a grunt and let his body collapse, if only to get a breath of fresh air. His legs and arms stretched far; star pose, they called it in yoga. He took up more space than he needed. He felt his toes kiss the shoreline. The cold water, lapping, reminded him he was still a living person, no matter how much the heat and humidity wanted him to believe he was a soul in hell. Cicadas chirped in the nearby vegetation. From the corner of his eye, he saw Victor mimic his movement, but turn on his side at the last second. He felt two hands reach for him, accommodating the dog of course.

  
Victor always did this thing when he touched Yuuri; he let his fingertips softly explore the skin he intended to grasp, like a careful pianist, accompanying a chaotic melody. Sometimes it tickled, sometimes it brewed hot impatience, one drop at a time, through the filter and ground beans. After they explored, the fingers confidently wrapped around their target; a hot coffee mug, steaming, or maybe his partner’s soft skin.

  
Yuuri’s hand was soon engulfed by two slightly larger ones. White hands, white like the beach sand and the ice and the eggshells both men walked on to get to this comfortable moment. It was silent between them; the kind of silence you can only share with someone you’ve seen naked many times. Someone you’ve seen at their most vulnerable. Crying, mid-orgasm, on the toilet, too long between haircuts.

  
He thought of Mari again, back to the moment his relationship with Victor became a tangible, public, wonderful thing. After his free skate in China, when Victor had kissed him in front of cameras for the entire figure skating world to see. They’d shared intimate moments before that day. Of course they had; in the privacy of a cold hotel room or at Ice Castle Hasetsu, when no one was working and watching each other’s bodies move became more than sport. They’d even made out once in the bathhouse, late at night when nothing was awake except rodents and lust. He was so vulnerable in that moment, his arousal obvious due to his lack of clothing. He was afraid of looking inexperienced until he realized Victor was equally as turned on, his erection poking above the surface of the water like a lighthouse, leading him, calling him, begging to show him the way to shore.

  
Yuuri broke off the deep kiss, leaving their lips wet with shared sweat and saliva and soiled possibilities; he hadn’t been ready to open up that night, even to Victor. Especially to Victor. Someone so experienced was sure to jump ship when he realized he was dealing with a 23-year-old virgin by choice.

  
(For the record, he didn’t jump anything; not until Yuuri was ready.)

  
“What’s up?” Victor’s voice was a swirling blizzard on the calmest of summer days.

  
Yuuri smiled. Sweat dripped from his brow. He remembered his coach’s words in the fall when he’d mess up his jumps: _What’s up? Care to share?_ “How do you always know when something’s on my mind?”

  
Victor closed his eyes, dodging a string of drool from the dog’s messy chops. Makka had given in to concern and was licking at his owner’s face to see if he was alright. Surely, the poodle thought it strange for one human to be lying on the ground, much less two. He hovered over the couple, breathing his rotten meat breath.

  
Neither man minded; Makka’s company was more than worth his many smells.

  
“I know because you’re a book. A diary, actually. You’re meant to be read, but only in secret until it all spills out when you dance.” Victor’s English was alright; sort of broken compared to Yuuri’s whose time in Detroit had made him more than fluent. His professors had told him there was no such thing as broken English, just different Englishes. Language is like a dance performed by many different people; ever evolving and branching off based on experience and culture.

  
“Want to hear a page from my diary?” Yuuri’s offer wasn’t as rare as it had once been. His shoulders no longer slumped with the hope he could forever go unnoticed; just another man with glasses and a plain face. He saw a brighter future; one where he still had to remind himself to keep his chin up, but less so every day.

  
“I do.” Victor propped himself on his elbow, one hand still holding Yuuri’s against the sand. The shells, buried shallow because what once lived in them had died, dug into the back of his hand. He didn’t cry this time.

  
“After you kissed me in China,” said Yuuri. His thumb rubbed gently against whatever part of Victor’s hand it could reach; it didn’t matter. Yuuri’s eyes were closed. Contact wasn’t policed between them. Where barriers once had been, there was diplomacy and trust. “You know, on camera.”

“I remember,” The grin on Victor’s face made his accent curl around the words more deeply.

  
“Well, when we got back home, my sister said something to me about it,” Yuuri paused to pet the dog with his free hand before continuing to explain the conversation that had taken place:

  
Mari leaned on a tree out front the resort. She had a cigarette between her lips. She’d put on weight since he returned from Detroit. After the Hot Springs on Ice tournament, his father had made a bad joke about how she’d _found_ the weight Yuuri had _lost._

  
“So, you and Victor.” Those were the first words she’d said to him since returning from China. He knew she was referring to the kiss on international television; how could he not? She was always so straightforward; the opposite of him.

  
His voice raised an octave to say, “Me and Victor?” It cracked when he spoke his partner’s name.

“You’re dating.”

Yuuri paused. He’d come outside, wine glass in hand, to get a moment of peace from the party that had been put together to celebrate his progression to the Rostelecom Cup. He took a sip of the dry white; it made him want water instead. “Yes.”

  
She took a long drag. The smoke billowed above them. The breeze carried it away. It reminded him of the many breakdowns he’d had before competing; so intense in the moment but gone the instant the universe willed it.

  
“That’s cool.”

  
The conversation blew away with the smoke; Yuuri opened his eyes on the beach, Victor next to him. Makka had wandered off to sniff a crab that came to the shore to dig a sand cave.

“Why’s that weird?” Victor asked, his head cocked in that way that made his hair tickle his high cheekbones.

  
“It’s not what she said, but what she didn’t say.” Yuuri sat up now, towering above Victor in a way he never would have dared to one year previous. His shadow blocked the sun from the Russian’s eyes; he blinked in quick succession and his lashes untangled from squinting too long. Victor’s pupils were so small from the excessive light; the blue was clearer than ever. Yuuri continued speaking, bookmarking for later use the image of the beautiful, shirtless man sprawled in the sand before him. “I read a book for a feminist American literature course in Detroit. It was about a heroine who didn’t marry at the end of the novel, which was uncommon for that time period. The last lines in the book were something along the lines of _“she did not give to a party what was meant for mankind.”_ I’ve thought about that quote often since then, especially last fall.”

  
Victor listened, now using his discarded linen shirt folded atop a sand mound as a pillow. He’d never let anyone except Yuuri talk this long without tuning them out or changing the subject. He couldn’t count on his ten fingers the other ways in which this younger man had encouraged him to grow. He looked deeply into brown eyes, the golden flecks within swimming as he put together the words he wanted to say.

  
“I took those words to mean: love recklessly, without boundaries or limits. She meant it in terms of marriage, but I think it can be applied elsewhere.”

  
Victor’s mind was sharp; it was connected to Yuuri’s on top of that. He understood immediately. “It stood out to you that your sister avoided asking you if you’re gay since you’re with me.”

  
“Exactly!” Yuuri’s emotions bubbled when he spoke of something with passion. The conversation to him was akin to nailing a risky combination on the ice. His blades dug in; shards flew. “I’ve been attracted to so many different people throughout the years. I never knew how to express it, because I was always trying to put a label on it. I worried what I would say to people. Gay and straight were wrong. Bisexual still felt exclusive. Pansexual was the most apt description, but who wants to have to explain what that means all the time?”

  
Victor sat up. He knew the feeling. On the ice, in this moment, Victor’s hands were around Yuuri’s waist. He lifted him with less ease than it would have appeared; muscle is heavier than fat. On the beach, their toes dug into the wet sand. Yuuri’s hand ran along Victor’s calf, gently. Victor reveled in it; the warmth behind the movement rivalled every sexual encounter he’d had combined.

  
“It’s a modern kind of love, Yuuri. In a society where people are desperate to be a part of something, there’s comfort in just existing.”

  
“I know. You taught me that,” Yuuri’s smile was pure and cute. His lips were chapped. His fingers tugged gently on his partner's blonde leg hairs. He thought of the night where Victor told him, under the dim lighting in his bedroom, of the people he’d had sex with. There were men, women, people who were both or neither. More than one at a time. Women who took pleasure in penetrating him. Men who took pleasure in watching him being penetrated by others. Men with vaginas and women without them. It was the first time in Yuuri’s life he met someone who was able to verbalize the way he’d felt about his own sexuality, though Victor had taken the complete opposite route of him in terms of expressing it. Where Yuuri recoiled in fear, Victor explored with curiosity.

  
Yuuri totally, utterly admired Victor’s forwardness. Asking for something he wanted, much less reaching out and taking it, was not something he knew how to do one year previous, unless heavily intoxicated. He felt shame at his own weakness, and decided he’d combat it this time rather than crumble. Yuuri leaned forward, his hand traveling from Victor’s leg toward his collarbone. He brushed his knuckles against the bare chest of the man he loved, running his thumb nail up Victor’s pale throat. He wrapped his fingers around, more gently than he realized and used his grip to guide Victor’s face toward him.

  
He reached for what he wanted. His ring glinted in the sun. His belly flooded with excitement; a teenager in puberty. Their lips met for the millionth time. It still felt like the first. Victor was a good kisser.

  
He spoke often of the “L” words Yuuri had taught him, but Yuuri was sure he’d learned more from Victor. _Lick_ the tongue, elicit a moan. _Laugh_ loud enough to turn heads. _Lay_ back and be submissive, or maybe not this time. _Lap_ up the cum, get another go around. _Laws;_ they didn’t exist when there was something so ethereal about the way they lived their lives.

  
_Ladybugs;_ one landed on his finger, attracted to the shining metal of his ring. Victor took him by the wrist, puckered his lips in a different way than they had been, and blew. The bug flew away, like the smoke, like the conversation. His breath smelled like lunch; steamed rice and chicken seasoned with garlic, leeks and lemon.

  
Makka made his timely reappearance, forcing himself between the two and ending the moment. He was wet from the ocean and smelled so much worse.

  
Victor laughed. It was loud and reckless, without boundaries. There were no limits between them. Yuuri had to reiterate the fact like a pinch in a dream.

Victor said, “Makka needs a bath and if I’m being honest, we do, too.”

  
Yuuri’s brows sank together, though his lips teased a smile. He lifted his arm and sniffed; he smelled like sunscreen, sweat and mud pies. The beaches in Hasetsu were made of flat dirt, darker in color than a lot of beaches he’d seen in the States or Europe. He wondered what the beaches were like in Russia; did Victor go to them a lot when he lived there? Did he have memories of being pushed into the shells, of crying?

  
Probably not, but that complementary aspect of their personalities was the best part of their dynamic.

  
The three of them took one more trip waist-deep into the ocean before heading to the showers. The dirt stuck to their feet like cake frosting. It squeaked under their toes. Victor put his arm around Yuuri as they walked, even though both men could smell the day’s odors lingering. That was Yuuri’s polite way of saying Victor’s shaved armpits smelled like B.O.; a rare thing but not impossible, even for a figure skating legend, the dance king of Russia.

  
Yuuri smiled, reached up and tickled his partner’s armpit. “I like how you keep them hairless, even just for me.”

  
There was no recoil from the touch, even though it surprised him. Yakov had taught him nothing if not discipline. “A dancer’s habit. You’d do well to pick it up.”

  
“You know I get ingrown hairs,” Yuuri mumbled, placing a hand on his belly where his hair trailed down until it sank beneath his swimsuit. His happy trail was something he was previously embarrassed about, but if Victor found it attractive, he could too. _It takes two to love yourself,_ he thought. He’d type that into the notes app on his phone to use for commentary on his previous skating season. He had a whole list of clever phrases; how could he not? His muse was standing next to him, humming a song he was entertaining as his next season’s program. Makka jumped, begging to be part of the conversation, but instead got showered with water from the outdoor faucet at the beach’s parking lot. Victor laughed and Makka tried to bite the source of the water. He must have thought it was sorcery. How do you explain plumbing to a dog?

  
Both men were gleaming now, soaked again by the shower. They roughhoused under the cold stream between bouts of laughter, rinsing each other’s hair for no other reason than to feel the fruits of their connection, to bask in the intimate vulnerability of washing a partner. Makka’s barks were staccato and necessary to complete their moment of domestic bliss.

  
The water dripping from Victor’s hair reminded Yuuri of the times he’d watch this man on television or in person, before he ever knew they’d be married or even on speaking terms. He remembered the way Victor never cried after a performance, the way many did. The way he did. Victor stood tall, soaked in sweat, receiving the cheers and flowers and dog stuffed animals thrown onto the ice with the same grace that got him there.

  
Yuuri remembered watching his sweat drop to the ice as a teenager, wondering what it might feel like to be beneath the sweat droplets, between the sheets of his bed. Teenage Yuuri bit his lip; set the image aside for later when he wasn’t sitting next to Yuuko. Adult Yuuri grinned at his partner, who had begun to dry his hair with their sandy towel, and aimed the cold water directly at Victor’s raised armpits. He laughed at his partner’s recoil, proud of the reaction he'd stirred on his second try. His feet dug into the sand, kicking up dirt. He remembered how it felt to be on the ice, setting his body in a similar position to change direction. He was ever grateful, in that moment and rest that followed, that he made the only selfish decision of his life: not to retire; to keep Victor for himself, sharing only the bare minimum of his precious muse with the rest of the world.

  
“Race you back. First one in the bath gets to kiss the other’s gold medal.”

  
Victor purred at the innuendo, grasping for his partner’s waist to slow him down. He missed, fingers brushing a wet swimsuit, a tease. They ran, barefoot, up the hill in pursuit of one another and a hot bath.

  
Makka barked after them; true bliss blew in on a cloud.  
  
  



End file.
